Tomorrow's Ideas, Today

The Genesis Students in Business Competition is a fantastic way for entrepreneurs of the future to gain their first real experience of pitching and implementing exciting new ideas.

For those who may be new to the concept, the competition offers two streams – one being centred on technology with a view to enabling business, and the other based around social entrepreneurship, encouraging students to come up with business models that will help the community. With a long list of hopefuls whittled down to four finalists for each category, the competition itself was held last Friday. All finalists made a 10-minute pitch and faced five-minutes of questions from a judging panel comprising of top academics and business representatives. It really was like a genuine Dragons’ Den situation.

This year the honours in the Best Innovation Capital Award category were shared by two teams – Beehive (who came up with an exciting web-based production technique utilising a laser-cutting machine that produces designs or artworks submitted via the Internet) and Mybo, who pioneered an online appointment booking system for the health care industry that enables users to locate relevant health service providers and schedule a consultation. The Best Social or Not-For-Profit category was taken out by a group called Hessex, who presented an idea for providing clean energy to poor villages in Africa and Asia via a solar panel installation that provides long-term benefits to host communities.

Prior to the actual final, each of the competing teams not only had the opportunity to engage in educational workshops run within the Business School, but also got to work with a mentor from the entrepreneur organisation TiE. And while each winner received $3000 to further develop their concepts, it’s important to recognise that all participating finalists presented highly original ideas that should one day give rise to innovative companies that will do extremely well.

Author: Andrew Lee, Genesis Students in Business Competition co-organiser
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Past Winners